Mixing up the Medicine

"Johnny's in the basement/ Mixing up the medicine/ I'm on the pavement/ Thinking about the government." - "Subterranean Homesick Blues" by Bob Dylan

Just call me Johnny this week, because I've been surrounded by medicine for four days now. The five-year-old I take care of has pneumonia for the second time this year, and it's been a rough week. With a fever of over 105, horrendous coughing, and enough gross bodily stuff to even make a brown collar worker like me scrunch up her nose in disgust, the poor kid has been miserable and I have been spending every spare second I have sanitizing the heck out of her house in an attempt to keep everyone else healthy, especially her sister. So far, so good, although I am exhausted!

Being home with a sick child all week has given me flashbacks to when I used to stay home sick from elementary school. The catch was that I was rarely sick. I was Ferris Bueller before I even knew who he was! I was the queen of faking illnesses. My favorite lie was saying that my stomach hurt and I might throw up. That was a surefire ticket home from school, often just minutes after the bell rang. At six or seven years old, I never thought how difficult it would be for my mom to take off work or anything like that. I just smiled to myself, thinking about getting out of school and spending my day watching cartoons and game shows. And if I went to my aunt's house, a soap opera or two.

My favorite place to go when I was "sick" was my Aunt Shary's house. I'm sure she knew I was faking all along, but she never said anything. My cousin would be off at school and I would get to hang out with my aunt all day, which was so much fun! She always treated me like an adult, an equal, even though I was only six months older than her daughter. I loved that! We would talk and watch TV, she would tell me stories about growing up with my dad and my other aunts and uncle, I would have soup or a balogna sandwich for lunch, and then I would miraculously recover from the brink of death I had feigned at school a few hours before, just in time to go pick my cousin up from school and play with her all afternoon.

Looking back now, I have no regrets from playing hooky so much - and I did it quite a bit! I am still waiting for my Academy Award to come in the mail. My family lost my Aunt Shary five years ago, but I will always have those memories of hanging out with her instead of sitting in a desk at school, bored out of my mind and probably getting into trouble for talking too much. Maybe I didn't have any awesome adventures like Ferris, but I have a whole heartful of memories that are more important than anything I could have learned in school. Sometimes it's just better to break the rules.

I'm Sick

"I'm sick, my head hurts/ Whatcha got in your purse?" - "Roseanne" by The Grateful Dead

I. Am. Sick. And I have nothing in my purse to make me feel better. I wonder what Jerry and the guys were alluding too...?

Getting sick is an occupational hazard for anyone working within coughing distance of a child. And when said child is coughing, sneezing, and breathing all over her caring, doting, understanding nanny who doesn't even flinch when she gets sneezed on right in the face, it's pretty much useless to hope that you will stay healthy. So now I'm sick and spending ten hours a day taking care of a sick kid too. We are just two miserable peas in a pod.

Hey, I just realized that my song of the day on Monday was also a Dead song. I'll keep this trend up, and hopefully the lyrics will be more upbeat tomorrow.

As for my goal this week, it's not looking good. I haven't written anything since Monday because I have felt too exhausted to pick up a pen or type out even a few sentences. I am hoping that I can catch up this weekend and finish my current chapter in Book Four (I still haven't decided on a title), as well as complete my writing prompts for the days I missed. I hate being sick. I get nothing done, I have no energy, I want to sleep (completely abnormal for me!), and I feel like dying. Ugh. I also tend to be a little dramatic. Can you tell?

Rockin' Pneumonia

"Young man rhythm's got a hold of me too/ I've got the rockin' pneumonia and the boogie woogie flu." - Johnny Rivers

When I picked Alana up from school yesterday, she was complaining that her ears hurt. She has had a cold for over a week, and sure enough, it has turned into an ear infection and pneumonia. Poor kid!

Luckily, it's not really as bad as it sounds. This morning during breakfast, she said her tummy was telling her to stop eating her pear, and I thought, okay, no big deal, she's full. But when I was encouraging her to rest and read her books quietly a little later on, she said very seriously that her tummy was telling her to stop reading and get up and play. Hmm... I took that as a sign that she wasn't feeling bad at all. She has still been her normal feisty, stubborn, silly self, so hopefully she will recover quickly and be back to normal - and school - in no time.